A CRISIS OF MORAL LEGITIMACY?
Yankelovich, Daniel
Among the many contrasts between the 1960s and the 1970s, perhaps the most politically fateful has been a massive shift in attitudes toward our national institutions— the presidency, Congress,...
...But when people began to question whether they are being well-served by their central institutions and whether their values are compatible with those pursued by the institutions, then a threat is posed to one of the key structural elements holding us together as a society...
...2 Then, with apparent suddenness and before the corrosive effects of Watergate could make themselves felt, the attitude surveys from 1969 on showed a sharp decline of public confidence in institutions and a deepening sense of malaise...
...15 A word of caution...
...People feel that the great national institutions command an excess of power, which they abuse for selfish ends...
...529 to the country's support of the welfare state, which hems in private enterprise with politically regulated ground rules...
...8 In times of social stability, the link is unobstrusive, even invisible...
...Yet, by the second Nixon election in 1972, this "normal" situation had reversed itself...
...Thus 72 percent of the public subscribe to the traditional belief that "private property is sacred...
...But curiously, there is little empirical research on threats to institutional legitimacy...
...These changes signal a political situation somewhat comparable to the 1930s, when the American public also experienced a pervasive feeling that something was fundamentally wrong with our institutions...
...Fortunately, the evidence yields an unambiguous answer: the public does not seriously question the ideological legitimacy of the welfare state or the major institutions of which it consists...
...The accusation "crooked politician" wells up from a momentary feeling of disgust, anger, and betrayal, and not from any deep conviction that honest leaders cannot be found...
...Is local government giving the community adequate police and fire protection, trash collection, school and housing accommodations...
...If our culture depended solely on laws, we could not survive as a viable civilization...
...The public enthusiastically endorses Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates...
...As an institution becomes larger and more powerful, it seeks out for advancement within its own ranks those experts and managers who identify what they believe to be morally correct with the narrow interests of the organization...
...A CRISIS OF MORAL LEGITIMACY...
...The exception to these judgments about institutional effectiveness, a critical one, refers to the federal government...
...Functional Legitimacy A SECOND TYPE of legitimacy relates to the effectiveness with which the public credits institutions...
...The essence of the problem is, I suspect, a hidden double standard of moral conduct, one for individuals and the other for institutions...
...place before Watergate...
...By the 1970s, for the majority that confidence had dissipated...
...10 Time/Yankelovich, Political Indicators, 1974...
...It may be true, as Nathan Glazer and others emphasize, 17 that there are limits to social policy and that many federal programs have ended up as part of the problem rather than part of the solution...
...20 Time/Yankelovich, Inc., National Survey, 1973...
...The problem is not with misplaced loyalty or personal corruption, although both exist...
...532 ment ahead of the interests of those they are supposed to serve...
...But this should not be taken literally, because public cynicism about money corruption is skin deep...
...13 But consistency of viewpoint matters less in the present context than conformity with norms...
...One is the view that the government should serve as referee and protector rather than doer...
...A majority of the public believes that the federal government is less effective today than it was in the past...
...The historic experience of Americans with the government and the economic system in fulfilling this bargain has led to two guiding principles, which exert a strong political influence, even though they are not codified into law or usually made explicit...
...And by margins greater than 5 to 1 (64 percent to 12 percent), Americans reject the proposition that we would be "better off if big business were taken over by the national government...
...Is the federal government doing its job in protecting the national security, regulating the economy, etc...
...The decline of confidence in institutions can be attributed almost wholly to the sharp decline in their moral legitimacy...
...When it comes to serving one's organization, men put on moral blinders...
...I would single out four key expectations: first, the expectation that the average person will have the opportunity to win modest economic security...
...Despite its obvious shortcomings, I believe the analogy between individual and institutional moral norms to be fundamentally sound...
...Most social purposes today are carried out through them...
...second, that he will have a fair opportunity to improve his standard of living...
...21 Daniel Yankelovich, Changing Values on Campus (New York: Washington Square Press, 1972...
...The two-thirds majority now withdrew confidence from these national institutions, with the mood shifting from optimism to anxious uneasiness...
...If institutions are threatened by a crisis of legitimacy, it is clearly not the result of any serious challenge to the ideological premises of the welfare state...
...A recent study by the Harris organization shows that a 61 percent majority of the public faults the federal government for its inability to solve the nation's problems, in contrast to a 37 percent minority of the political leadership who criticize the federal establishment on these same grounds...
...The argument that Mussolini caused the Italian trains to run on time was often cited in favor of the legitimacy of his regime...
...III M y final point is to call attention to a peculiar defect in our social institutions, one that Max Weber with remarkable prescience identified many years ago...
...An older man who divorces his wife of many years because a young mistress fills his current needs may be living through an understandable human crisis, but he could hardly delude himself into believing that his conduct is morally justified on the grounds of the greater effici - ency with which he is now meeting those needs...
...cannot for long accept a society in which power, privilege and profits are not distributed according to some morally meaningful criteria...
...528 DANIEL YANKELOVICH Lipset distinguishes between effectiveness and legitimacy, 14 partly on the grounds that effectiveness can be gauged by objective criteria while judgments of legitimacy are subjective...
...6 • Surveys also show that just in the last two years, mistrust of "the people in power in the country" has shot up from an uncomfortable 54 percent in 1972 to an overwhelming 88 percent in 1974.7 THROUGHOUT the post-World War II period and up to the late 1960s, about two-thirds of all Americans felt unqualified confidence in our national institutions, so much so that the electorate felt it could afford to ignore politics and devote itself to private life...
...22 The thought expressing that principle is most familiar to thinkers of the Left, but this observation by Irving Kristol is most applicable today to the historic constituency of the Right: the lowermiddleclass white-collar worker who feels that his economic status and position of respectability is being threatened by the moral turpitude of institutions to which he would, under ordinary circumstances, give his unstinting allegiance...
...A CRISIS OF MORAL LEGITIMACY...
...It is possible that this shift in public psychology signifies little of enduring consequence: opinion polls often pick up rumblings of discontent that lead to few practical consequences...
...6 Time/Yankelovich, Inc., Political Indicators, 1974...
...ness falling from 70 percent in 1968 to 33 percent in 1970—a low state from which business has not recovered...
...otherwise, organized social life would not be possible...
...Suffice it to say that to make headway in solving this problem we can expect a renewal of vitality in the referee function of the central government...
...Among the many contrasts between the 1960s and the 1970s, perhaps the most politically fateful has been a massive shift in attitudes toward our national institutions— the presidency, Congress, the courts, business, the military, the unions, the media, and the universities...
...But that criticism came from minorities— blacks, students, social critics, etc...
...The survey findings reveal that the country does not question the basic premises of the welfare state...
...21 It is not profits as such that disturb people but whether they are "deserved" in the moral sense...
...A CRISIS OF MORAL LEGITIMACY...
...What we are witnessing today is, then, a 19 Time/Yankelovich, Inc., Pre-election Survey, Oc tober 1972...
...Ideological Legitimacy THE FIRST TYPE of legitimacy is ideological...
...changes in the rules governing campaign financing and the appointment of regulatory officials...
...There is widespread support among the public both for the private property/capitalist component of the welfare state and for the political control of these privately owned 9 Irving Howe, "Notes on the Welfare State," in Poverty: Views from the Left, Irving Howe and Jeremy Lamer, eds...
...As recently as 1968, surveys of the Institute for Social Research of the University of Michigan 1 Time/Yankelovich, Inc., Pre-election Survey, October 1972...
...A thousand times a day they can make small judgments, even sacrifices, to subordinate their personal impulses to the need of others...
...And when a man comes to feel that he is serving a moral purpose, all restraints can be suspended: men will commit unconscionable crimes in the name of morality...
...new chapter in the history of American populism...
...My interpretation of these incomplete con fusing findings is that people believe the federal government should not be the direct and principal agent responsible for the solution of problems, but that its main function should be confined to that of ref eree, regulator, and protector of the public interest...
...Conversely, an institution may be failing utterly to perform its essential functions, while its constituency fails to recognize the failure...
...I would, however, subsume at least the subjective aspect of people's judgments about effectiveness in my definition of institutional legitimacy, on the ground that people make such judgments constantly and that judgments of effectiveness bear directly on their confidence in institutions...
...Many social critics, both Left and Right, deplore this outlook as mundane, lacking heroic qualities...
...in the Supreme Court, from 51 to 28 percent...
...18 See Coser's introductory essay in Political Sociology: Selected Essays, Lewis A. Coser, ed...
...But social morality governing individual behavior through complex patterns of expectations and norms is universal because it needs to be...
...The purpose of social morality is to mediate between the welfare of the individual and the group...
...In an era marked by a general weakening of social bonds—family, community, church, employer—the bond of national allegiance forms a critical part of the average person's identity...
...The principle is that the profits of the private sector should be guided not by their size but by how they are made...
...While individuals live by multiple purposes and complex motives, institutions, if they are to be efficient, tend inexorably toward single-mindedness of purpose—to maximize profits, to win elections, to increase budgets, to grow in size and influence...
...What we are seeing today, contrary to popular belief, is not a growth in corruption...
...Even college students, the most severe critics of the system, believe overwhelmingly (80 percent) that business is entitled to a fair profit...
...18 The third type of legitimacy— " moral legitimacy—can be defined through this observation by Lewis Coser...
...Between 1965 and 1972, the Harris studies show confidence in higher education falling from 61 to 33 percent...
...It is an anguished outburst of resentment by those who feel they have worked hard and sacrificed, only to reap exploitation in return...
...It would not be surprising if the leadership of the Mafia felt a sense of moral self-fulfillment in pursuing the interests of their institution...
...in answer to another set in the same interview, they say that we need an even stronger presidency...
...It is what business does with its economic clout that troubles people...
...5 Recent Yankelovich studies show that a 71 percent majority of the public now feels that "things are going badly in the country," a sharp increase from 39 percent in 1972...
...10 At the same time, however, there is majority support for stricter government regulation of business, l' and for the view that the federal government has an obligation to see to it that "the poor are taken care of, and that no one goes hungry...
...Institutional legitimacy is therefore an evaluative concept: it refers to judgments citizens make as to whether their institutions are entitled to the authority they claim...
...An individual, in fulfilling his own needs, is expected to be mindful of the needs and desires of others...
...In the top ranks of the institutions that rule our lives there are men, and increasingly women, who may be personally selfless but are also remorselessly selfish for their organizations...
...This is the essence of private morality: the ability to subordinate one's personal desires to serve others...
...On the all-important matter of what the public truly expects from its government we find much confusion...
...The moral legitimacy of institutions becomes threatened when people who accept the normative rules of the political/economic system come to believe that the institutions are violating these rules for immoral reasons...
...The essential point about populism, especially in its current version, is that despite an antibusiness emphasis, such as we normally associate with the political Left, it has a profoundly conservative thrust...
...There is some information on what the shift in public attitudes does not mean (more on this later), but little that is reliable or definitive on why it has occurred...
...Increasingly, we have become a society of large central institutions...
...in the Congress, from 42 to 21 percent...
...There is no huge outcry or demand for reform, revolution, or even far-reaching political change...
...The contrast here is with ideological legitimacy, which is threatened when questions are raised about the rules themselves...
...New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967...
...It now seems clear that the advanced industrial nations have much in common, regardless of whether their economics are capitalist, socialist, or mixed...
...In its place has sprung up a cynical, quasi-sophisticated public view of political and business leaders as dominated by a selfishness so widespread and corrupt as to pit our central institutions against their own constituencies...
...14 Seymour Martin Lipset, "Political Sociology," in Sociology Today: Problems and Prospects (New York: Basic Books, 1959...
...The purpose of the law is to codify the minimum morality of the society, not to embody its everyday moral norms...
...As late as in the 1972 campaign, 75 percent of the public agreed that it was "sick and tired of hearing people attack patriotism, morality and other traditional American values," 1 a judgment that helped to defeat McGovern because he was linked in the public mind with the critics...
...The bargain works something like this...
...What are we to make of this massive shift in public sentiment...
...A massive 93 percent— just about a consensus—express their willingness to "make personal sacrifices, if necessary, to preserve the free-enterprise system...
...527 concept has been progressively deepened...
...In the 1972 election, the only reservation a majority of the voters held about Nixon was that he appeared to be too close to big business...
...On the contrary, at the level of general values there is remarkable congruity between the system in its abstract form and the values espoused by a cross section of Americans...
...Today's executives and managers in business and all other giant bureaucracies may well be more personally honest than their predecessors...
...We would not need social morality if each individual automatically en hanced the general welfare by an energetic pursuit of his own desires...
...But approved or not, the stability of our society rests squarely on how well this bargain is preserved...
...The average citizen, although increasingly unsure of the wisdom of such government policies as those in Vietnam, nonetheless reacted vehemently against the critics...
...new codes of ethics governing honorable resignation from office if such autonomy is threatened...
...4 Subcommittee of Intergovernmental Relations, U.S...
...Unfortunately, the survey research evidence dealing with this component of legitimacy is more elusive and ambiguous than that on the ideological aspect...
...Men...
...12 Confidence and Concern (see Note 4...
...The decline of confidence in government grows directly out of the belief that government has violated this trust...
...and fourth, that he will receive rewards in the form of money, respect, and opportunities for advancement, in exchange for hard work and observance of the rules...
...It seeks to restore, not change...
...The current situation is so confused and so marked by cross-pressures that a case could be made for either extreme, or for any number of gradations in between...
...Intuitively, the mass of Americans turn for the solution of the most pressing national problems to the single figure of the president...
...At a superficial level, the diagnosis focuses on money corruption...
...The decade of the 1960s witnessed its own attack upon American institutions, some of it unsurpassed in harshness and depth...
...By objective standards an institution may be functioning well, even though observers may fault it from lack of knowledge, prejudice, or changed expectations...
...Today, what it is that is wrong remains vague and elusive, at least in the public view...
...They are DANIEL YANKELOVICH imbued by their upbringing with a sense of responsibility that many of them carry out faithfully in their private lives...
...Thus, the principal lesson drawn by the public from Watergate is the view held by 70 percent of the voters that "Watergate shows how big business misuses its influence and controls the country...
...None of these mechanisms will suffice, of course, unless there is also a renewal of moral conscious ness...
...entities...
...530 conviction that private ownership is right and proper, but that the private owners are cheating on the rules, signifies a violation of moral legitimacy...
...It is a drama full of threat—more so, for example, than the troublesome McCarthy era of the 1950s— but also offering some promise...
...A CRISIS OF MORAL LEGITIMACY...
...3 Yankelovich, Inc., National Survey, 1973...
...And all this leaves them frustrated and bewildered...
...So bleak is the public skepticism that people suspect that even if you throw out the rascals now in office, others DANIEL YANKELOVICH will replace them...
...showed that 7 out of 10 Americans (73 percent) expressed continuing faith in the federal government—and almost as many (70 percent) felt "business was succeeding in striking a good balance between profitmaking and service to the public...
...The crisis of moral legitimacy reflects, I would say, an only partly articulated belief that a silent contract, a kind of implicit bargain between the public and our institutions, has been rudely violated...
...19 Subsequently, the illegal campaign contributions from business that surfaced in the Watergate revelations merely confirmed these suspicions...
...11 Ibid...
...It is accompanied by a harsh punitive attitude toward criminals, "welfare bums," pornographers...
...If an ideological threat exists, it would be, in our society, a questioning or rejecting of the premises of the welfare state...
...Irving Howe has provided us with a useful if compressed formulation of the essential form taken by the welfarestate in the United States today: By the welfare state one signifies a capitalist society in which the interplay of private and/or corporate owners in a largely regulated market remain dominant but in which the workings of the economy are so modified that the powers of free disposal by property owners are controlled politically...
...that is, the support people give to the core values and ideas underlying a political/economic system...
...Although public mistrust is directed against both major political parties, there is less than massive support for basic change...
...People in positions of authority in institutions usually have strong superegos...
...12 It could be argued, as Philip Converse has, that the public does not hold a coherent political philosophy and that the majority merely gives lip service to platitudinous norms...
...16 This expectation holds the key 15 Confidence and Concern (see Note 4...
...3 • Studies by the Harris organization reveal an even broader pattern of erosion...
...20 The second principle that mediates the bargain underlying our mixed economic/ political system is even more deeply buried than the first...
...Anchor, 1963...
...Those concerned with achieving more equality in the society feel this "bargain" lies like a dead weight on their hopes...
...Harper Torchbooks, 1965...
...and structural changes in the governing institutions, such as corporation boards of directors, so that they reflect a wider range of social interest and a greater democratic responsiveness...
...The significance of the present crisis of legitimacy —and this much overworked term does seem appropriate here—lies in the fact that for the first time since cross section measurements of Americans began, a majority of Americans feel a deep distress about the moral rightness of many of their institutions...
...This is why, at the beginning, I referred to the public's "quasi-sophistication...
...At that time, the trouble—large-scale unemployment— was clear to everyone...
...In answer to one set of questions, they say that the president has too much power and it should be curbed...
...7 Time/Yankelovich, Inc., National Survey, 1974...
...New York: William Morrow, 1968...
...My own research leads me to propose three broad categories of institutional legitimacy, corresponding to three kinds of judgments we find people making about our institutions...
...Watergate is not the only answer, since most of the erosion took 5 Yankelovich, Inc., National Surveys, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1974...
...A widespread desire to change from private to public ownership of property would raise questions of ideological legitimacy, while the 17 Nathan Glazer, "The Limits of Social Policy," Commentary, September 1971...
...Even today, at a time when the executive branch is mistrusted as rarely before, people are wildly inconsistent about the power that should reside in the presidency...
...in the military, from 62 to 35 percent...
...On the other hand, the change may be heavy with consequence, for in a democracy the withdrawal of confidence in public institutions by large numbers of citizens can presage a period of instability and change...
...A paradox: within our institutions men carry out with a high conviction of moral self-righteousness decisions that may be amoral or clearly immoral...
...The flaw lies in the lack of an institutional morality to parallel our social or individual norms...
...The erosion of confidence began to quicken at the turn of the decade...
...This social resentment is probably the most potent political force in America today...
...Few of these people are corrupt in the commonplace sense...
...But we are not concerned here with an objective appraisal of the government's success or failure but only with the reasons for the remarkable fallingoff of public confidence in institutions...
...This discontent has not assumed an activist political form, and that is proof of its nonideological character...
...The research suggests that the majority of Americans seem to believe their state and local governments are not functioning any worse than they did in the recent past...
...While confidence in the press, trade unions, educational institutions, and the professions has declined, they are not being criticized essentially on the grounds that they have become disorganized and substantially less effective...
...9 The first question we must ask, then, is whether the precipitous decline of confidence in our institutions signifies a rejection of the premises of the welfare state...
...4 • National cross-section studies by Daniel Yankelovich, Inc., show confidence in busi2 Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan...
...New York: Free Press, 1964...
...third, that consumer "rights" will be his, such as securing fair value for his money...
...The chief complaint the public presses against the country's institutions, from the presidency down, is bad faith...
...The significance of these findings can be misleading unless people's expectations are taken into account...
...It lies with our failure to insist upon an ethic of responsibility for the objectives of institutions...
...and that the problems we face are worse than at any other time in the personal recollection of the people interviewed...
...Its reality emerges clearly only when it is violated—as people think it has been in the recent crisis...
...Beginning with Max Weber, the 8 Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (NewYork: Doubleday, 1960...
...that "the country is in deep and serious trouble today" (68 percent...
...16 Ibid...
...II In clarifying what the new public discontent means, the concept of "institutional legitimacy" is probably the most useful one to bring to bear...
...We need moral norms to govern their behavior and to reconcile their self-interest with the well-being of the whole society, as badly as we need them for individuals...
...What lies beneath this spread of discouragement and mistrust...
...The care and feeding of an industrialized, highly technological society and the distribution of its benefits require large-scale organization and highly developed managerial skills...
...HERE ARE some representative findings: • Studies conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research show that loss of faith in the federal government almost doubled between 1968 and 1973, jumping from 27 percent to 51 percent...
...But the tendency of all organizations is to place their own survival and aggrandize 22 Irving Kristol, "Reflections on Capitalism and the Free Society," Public Interest, Winter 1971...
...Not only is ideological fervor lacking, but people also fear that changes in procedures or party structure will not get to the underlying defect...
...It is fueled by a sense of public morality outraged...
...a more scrupulous insistence on the autonomy of politically sensitive agencies...
...This is true across the board, encompassing virtually all institutions, but it is truest of all for the strategic core of the system: the relationship of the federal government to business...
...13 Philip E. Converse, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics," in Ideology and Discon tent, David Apter, ed...
...They suspect that moral constraints operating in the past no longer operate today...
...There is little doubt that the public has, until recently, supported what has come to be known as "the imperial presidency...
...The public is prepared to accept, as an inherent part of the private enterprise/welfare state system, vast inequities in social benefits—provided that the individual citizen receive in exchange certain rights and privileges...
...What follows is my own effort to analyze from the data a novel and highly volatile social/political drama...
...Note the great enthusiasm and relief in the first days of the Ford administration...
...Watergate has damaged the Republican party, but the Democratic party is not an automatic beneficiary—a fact the more sensitive Democrats understand...
...It is a moral complaint...
...In the 1960s, a majority of Americans placed almost unqualified confidence in these institutions...
...As S. M. Lipset points out, institutional legitimacy is so strategic a concept because it focuses attention on the sensitive links that connect the political process with the social context...
...People fear that those with power and responsibility will somehow find a way around any new procedures or legal provisions to place the narrow interests of institutions ahead of the public well-being...
...A large core of faith lies under the thin layer of cynicism, to the effect that the system can work and that honest leadership can be found to make it work if only a climate of moral integrity can be restored...
...This judgment holds even more with regard to big business...
...The question then arises as to what mechanisms we can invent other than the law to insure that institutions will meet our changing social requirements—analogous to the patterns of moral expectation that contain individual behavior...
...Each has different practical consequences...
...Senate, Confidence and Concern: A Survey of Public Attitudes (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973...
...Moral Legitimacy "POLITICAL ACTION normally takes place within a universe of normative regulation and involves the acceptance by all but revolutionary actors of the rules of the political game...
...More than three-quarters of Ameri cans (76 percent) hold the view that "the federal government should not run the life of the country but should regulate major companies, industries and institutions to be sure that they do not take advantage of the public...
...Yet, the typical official in authority comes to feel that in advancing the interests of his organization—his party, his department, his company—he is serving a moral purpose, however narrowly and selfishly it may be defined...
...But the principal reason for Nader's remarkable public support has little to do with his role as critic of business effectiveness, if anything, people believe that big business is all too effective...
...And by this standard, although people gripe and grouch about the lack of effectiveness of the federal government, I cannot detect in the research evidence any large-scale sentiment that our institutions are failing to perform their everyday bread-and-butter functions...
...But now the moral intuition of the average citizen tells him that something fundamental is amiss...
...We have laws for restraining institutions, but that is not the same thing as moral standards...
Vol. 21 • September 1974 • No. 4
